An incorrigible Cognitive Dissident

At the End of the Day

Dealing as I do on a daily basis with nitwits who can’t see that today’s Arab despot will almost certainly be preferable to any replacement the “rebels” have in mind, at times it is an enormous relief to just sit and write an ATEOTD about the amusing normalities and harmless abnormalities of real life.

So here I am – living in the heart of rural France, soaking up the culture of small community life….and the couple running the local boulangerie are called Fred and Lil. I mean, it’s not exactly Clochemerle is it? But they’ve settled very quickly into my nearest village, and the bread they churn out is excellent. Also they are up for a laugh.

Across the road, Valu and Pepito’s multi-purpose épicerie (is it a grocers is it a tabac is it a presse is it a butcher’s?) waits for the local bureaucrats and architects to finally decide when construction can start on the new joint Mairie/private sector project to give the village a bigger shop with more choice – alongside flats for the elderly – on the site of the old Catholic primary school. This amount of planned change all in one go has clearly been too much for the local government infrastructure: it needs time to digest it all before diving in the deep end. At this rate, the new venture will be constructed, up and running some time in 2027. (By which time, as they say in Ireland, “Sure, all de old people will be dead”.)

About ten minutes from here by car, the local town’s elders decided two months ago to rebuild the covered market. In classic builder fashion, their workers turned up to demolish the rickety old roof, replace the old stone upon which it rested, and then construct the steelwork web for the new roof. At which point, the human forms who carried out these works vapourised into another dimension. That was three weeks ago, since when nothing has happened. The market having decamped to a new site, I have the sense that it might be very difficult to tempt them back to the old location….which would be a shame, as two bars, a restaurant and a butchers have seen their turnover dip sharply since they left.

The weather, meanwhile, continues to behave as if it was June and we were in St Tropez. It’s been 23 – 27°C for nine days now, and apart from rain forecast for Saturday, seems set to keep this up. For any Brit – expat or not – an Easter Weekend with even halfway decent weather is not so much a joy as a miracle.

Aquitaine at this time of year really is a bit special. The blossom heralding fruit later on is everywhere, the winter-soaked soil gets sucked up to produce bright green foliage, and every manner of wildlife wakes up from hibernation, or returns from a winter spent in North Africa. The hoopoes are once again to be seen parading like gay punks, gigantic hare skitter about like Atlantic supply ships evading U-Boat torpedoes, and the Coypu venture out of an early morning in search of new shoots. But whether you glance down at insects or look up at birds, one activity is common to all: shagging.

One species that did well out of a mild winter is your common or garden ant. Another is the field mouse. Both have invaded my domiciliary space in the last week. And so the battle continues for the lowly human inhabitant of all this, the never-ending struggle to cut grass, trap mice, dissuade ants, stop coypu from digging escape tunnels, and fire warning shots at shrieking magpies.

I was saying to one of my more ribald and irreverent French chums the other day, “La variété est l’épice de la vie” (variety is the spice of life). Sadly – as usual with me – I under-pronounced the é on épice, and thus uttered ‘le piss’. This was received as ‘Variety is the piss of life”. “Ohlala,” he giggled, “how you English like the surreal side of philosophy”.

Jean-Pierre knew perfectly well what I’d said. He was just taking l’épice.

On a broader canvas, this is how most ordinary French people see the nature of existence – far too serious to be taken too seriously. They believe passionately in the mutuality of communities, but they see the undermining of national politicians and bureaucrats as essential to the success of those communities.

A classic example would be the Farmers’ view of pc affectations. Yet another of their crypto-Soviet signs has gone up this week in my area: it suggests, ‘Save a farm-labourer, kill a Vegan’. Heaven help me, I laughed out loud. The previous notice asserted, ‘L’Elysées – pay your debts and leave us alone’. The one before that (a reference to cropping in August) alleged ‘Ever noticed how, when there is work to be done, the pen pushers are on holiday?’

Sadly, the right EUNATO propaganda at the right time can quickly bring back C’est l’heure de gloire pour La Patrie jingoism – or easy acceptance of candidates like Macron. However, even when this happens, a certain pride in individual thought remains. I think Marine Le Pen will get more votes in the run-off than many expect; but she will not win. The French majority don’t need cunning racists to spot the Islamic threat to their civilisation: they will punish the élite if they fail to deal with (and learn from) it. But they will not elect Marine Le Pen as President.

Having the time now to make do and mend (which most people don’t) I’m probably every neocon’s idea of the Beast from Hell. But only by having the time to refuse to repurchase does one appreciate just how disgracefully compromisedmost durable product design and manufacture is. However, when you add to time spent on that lark the dozens of wasted hours frittered away trying to correct the incompetence of bureaucrats – tax inspectors, insurance clerks, retail banking staff, welfare departments and so forth – it becomes clear just how much of our Time left on this mortal coil is held hostage by the corporate State.

Over the last two decades, a third leg on the stool that is life has been grown in order to give our slave fate a firm basis. I refer of course to information technology software.

Here’s a fab fact with which to anaesthetise your supper guests: if you ignore software updates for four months, it will take two days of nonstop downloading to get your pc back up to date. And at some point during the process, a panel will appear onscreen to allege that the drivers you require to perform the updating downloads are obsolete, and also need

I do not doubt that if we all just ignored the bastards, not only would very little harm come to us: the Behemoth that allows them to live well and then retire in luxury would implode….and the ghastly Überbau that renders us all figurative Quasimodos would be gone.

But only briefly….until the next set of freedom-fighters become der neue Überbau.

However, it’s Easter, the headcases are mainly with their long-suffering families, and so I offer a very happy crucifixion nostalgia to you all. A bloke dies from slow, drowning asphyxiation in an alleged attempt to save us all, and the British eat chocolate bunnies to commemorate the event. To celebrate his birth, the Germans have evening markets where you can eat delicious sausages and drink Gluwein. As a mark of respect for him wandering about in the desert, we give up sugary things and mind-altering substances. To stay truthful to his message of pacifist tolerance, we create Crusades, Inquisitions and Holy Wars.

Two weeks out from Samhain, cows in N.Z. , being generally prepared to enter into any emerging festival atmosphere , find the whole Eostre thing sadly lacking ; in authenticity, mostly.
Cows , of course , are always approving of a Sunday.

Ants outdoors on hard paving, Jayes fluid will shift them in minutes however the ones that don’t die will move on, beware which direction you drive them.
A more eco friendly way told to me by a farmer but which I’ve never tried, is to keep some chickens in the affected area, probably not indoors though.

Listen up everyone, this is the second time in four days a post at The Slog has been ignored by many in favour of sounding off about this and that hobby-horse. This isn’t a forum free4all, it’s a blog. If you’ve got nothing to say about the content, say nothing.
The next time people forget their manners on this scale, I’m going to stick the offending threads into pending. So either way, you will wind up saying nothing publicly.

I would also question the logic of creating an insurgency in a peaceful, secular country in order to create the conditions necessary to construct and maintain something as easily sabotaged as a pipeline. Doesn’t seem to make much sense.

If, however, what I was really after was the toppling of a secular leader that provided succour to my Shia enemies and whose valuable Golan oil and water supplies were there for the taking once the state disintegrated, an insurgency would be just what the doctor ordered. To mask my true motives behind a narrative that described a fight over gas pipelines would be a valuable red herring. Think the ‘blood for oil’ position that was wheeled out once the WMD in Iraq fiction was exposed. Look at the personalities in successive U.S. administrations that cheer-lead for these middle-eastern adventures. It is difficult not to join the dots.

@Fritter, Interesting article. Thank you. I do however have doubts about the veracity of anything based in the Globalist publication Foreign Affairs, and articles that contain such gems as; “(Russia) has even gone to war in Georgia and Ukraine to disrupt plans to export gas from other parts of the Middle East.”, are unreliable in my estimation. Is there any evidence for this alleged Russian belligerence? (Incidentally, I have no doubt that Russia does have an interest in reducing the competition for Gazprom, but I’m not sure Putin’s intervention is founded on this.)

Putin would have to be both stupid and blind (and he is neither), to miss the encroachment of NATO on his borders. A quick glance a map showing NATO/U.S. bases and an understanding of who was behind the Nuland engineered coup in Ukraine show Russia’s fears of envelopement are well grounded in reality. Syria is the route to Iran, and Putin is very aware of what a Nato/Neocon friendly Iran would mean for his country.

Pipelines may indeed be part of it, but the data and history of the Middle East in the Neocon years would strongly sug*est that other more nefarious interests are responsible.

”In the meantime Iran, which owns the other smaller, share of the Persian Gulf gas field, decided to lodge its own rival plan for a $10 billion pipeline to Europe via Iraq and Syria and then under the Mediterranean Sea…..”
so any disruption which has been enormous as we know is a spanner in the works fr Iran, and again Russia.

I’m not sure I buy the pipeline argument although I acknowledge it could be a minor factor in this. Iraq and Libya did not have pipelines and yet were, (along with Syria and Iran), on Wesl*y Cl@rk’s list of 7 countries in five years. What fantasists believe that the jihadist failed state that will inevitably replace As*ad’s secular administration would be a suitable environment for a very vulnerable pipeline?

This is Oded Y*nin unfolding as the Wiki1eaks Hi1debeast email confirms. The pipeline is, in my view, the cover story for those that do not buy the ‘won’t somebody think of the children’ rationale.

It is interesting to note that during the Cuban missile crisis President Kennedy had no qualms in releasing hitherto secret U2 photographic footage in order to substantiate his accusations. Trump apparently waves 4 sheets of paper as proof of Assad’ guilt, before launching illegal missile strikes against his assets.
It does make one wonder! The stakes today are equally high, yet the Presidency is playing games with humanities future.

Those of us experienced in Real Estate know how ownership of a piece of land affects so many things. Syria is exactly this. It is stopping the transit of a gas pipeline from A to B, which would affect the wealth and power of C. That’s calling it as it is, and if it means there will be a fight over it, what’s new? As they say, cest la vie cher ami.

Once Brexit is done will the hideous fields of Rape Seed disappear as suddenly as they appeared once the subsidies are removed, hope so.
Wow John Clochemerle I remember that on TV back in the 70’s I think , god am I that old yep you are.

If the French fail to choose someone who will redress the balance than, as you rightly pointed out, ‘Today’s despot will be far preferable to the alternative’.
That applies to France as well. As the Dutch are soon to find out, they will come regret not taking full advantage of the opportunity they had recently.

So, you don’t have a toilet in the middle of the high street – n’est pas?
Just catching the news tonight on different channels it certainly seems like the US of A and Theresa May are about to blow themselves up – let’s hope so